CHAPTER VXII.

SOME HANGINGS AND OTHER INCIDENTS.

In 1975 the even course of routine missionary work in the Helena district was broken by two executions, one in August, the other in October.

At the beginning of the May, Frank Warl, an industrious hard-working man and a Catholic, was found murdered at his coal pits at Ten Mile. It soon came to light that the horrible deed had been perpetrated for plunder by three individuals known about town, two whites and a black, or, more precisely, a mulatto. While the one last mentioned and another of the trio, were soon after apprehended, the third and, from every indication, the chief criminal, managed to escape. Time and again it was more than hinted that he could not have evaded capture but through the help of a secret society to which he belonged, and whose members were able to see him safe our of the country. True or false, we cannot say.

His two companions who feel into the clutches of the law, were tried, convicted and condemned to death. Neither was a Catholic, but both asked for a priest, and the writer now visited them for several weeks, to instruct them as well as to prepare them for their doom. They were to be executed on the same day, august 13, but a technical flaw discovered at the very last hour in the trial of the mulatto, delayed his execution till the following October. Both were received into the church, and died apparently in the best dispositions of sincere repentance.

Two other executions took place some time later on, one at Radesburg, in March, 1880, which was attended by Father Guidi, and the other in Helena in February, 1881.

The criminal in the latter case was a revolting specimen of humanity, who had grown up in the woods, more like an animal than a human being, and who never knew what restraint of one's passions meant. He was convicted of murdering his won employer, one J. Tacks, a well-known settler, who lived only a

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few miles from town, along the Bozeman road. When attempting to run away, the murderer found the horse he tried to ride so unmanageable that he had to trade him off at Silver city for another mount, as he saw no other chance of escape. But this very transaction furnished the clue that quickly led to his capture.

Informed by the sheriff that Tacke's murderer had been captured and was locked up in jail, we called to see him at the invitation of the same official, who had described the man as "a hard-looking case." We found him all that, seemingly stolid, stupid, and devoid of human feelings. We visited him in his cell several times from that on, and for the first two weeks we hardly got from him a coherent sound. The doctor who examined him pronounced the prisoner, "a wild man." However, to our own and everybody else's surprise, all this was changed, and seemingly entirely of a sudden.

Here is the story a told by himself to the writer. A couple of nights before, whilst perfectly awake, he saw ina corner of his cell the strangest kind of a light, which struck terror into his heart. Hew now spoke with ease and intelligently, instead of giving out meaningless grunts as before; his whole appearance had also undergone a noticeable change, the guards themselves wondering at his transformation. He was instructed and given the rites of the Church, and persevered to the last in the best cheerfulness, as he was not only willing, but quite glad to atone for his crime.

A few days before his execution we had enrolled him in the Brown Scapular of Our Lady., the physician officially appointed to certify to the man's death, on the body being lowered for him to examine the neck, whether it had been broken in the drop, noticed strings of the Scapular. He tugged at them and brother the Scapular out, which he held for

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a while in his hands, scanning them with apparent curiosity. He now turned to the writer and asked "what that thing was for," the man, though considered a good physician, happened to be a very poor Catholic. But even so, he knew well enough what our Lady's Scapulars were. He now put them back and, in the act of doing so, made quite audibly the sneering remark, "checked through.' The ludicrous side of the cutting sarcasm made the writer bite his lips to suppress an involuntary smile, which could never have been more out of place. But then, instantly also, came to our minds, the though that the cynic, like Caiaphas of old, had very probably said much more than he had meant.

Shortly after the executions wild rumors began to spread through the town that the place where poor Tacke had been murdered had become haunted, different people asserting that they had seen some strange light, now floating around and over the premises, now gliding along the fence, now inside the house, now in the stable or in the field close by. the strange phenomenon lasted a couple of months and, as anyone can see for himself by reference to the Helena papers of that date, the whole community became absorbed in the apparition.

The writer spoke with several trustworthy persons who assured him that they themselves with their own eyes had seen the mysterious light, not once, but several times, and that there could be no doubt as to the truth of the thing, whatever its cause. On being spoken top, and asked our opinion concerning the affair, without ever alluding to what had occurred in the jail, we simply remarked that, most likely, some shrewd fellow had cast his eyes on the ranch of the murdered man, and with a view to get it cheap by frightening off other competitors, had manufactured and trotted out the shining ghost. Then, as well as after, many theories were advanced to clean up or explain the thing away, but we must candidly confess that the strange occurrence has ever been, and still is to this very day, an unsolved riddle in our mind.

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Continuing our record--though no longer of hangings, but of other incidents of the period--the following may well appear as much our of the usual run of things as what we have just related.

A plasterer by trade, who would occasionally indulge a little too much in drink, and a chum of his, a bricklayer, who also suffered from the same weakness, were sleeping in the same cabin. Suddenly our friend, the plasterer, began to scream and please piteously for help, as if somebody has hold of him and were trying to throttle him. This woke up his room-mate who, after inquiring what was all that fuss about, bantered him considerably about snakes, dreams and nightmares, though neither of the two had tasted any liquor for several days. The plasterer felt as if he has passed even more than through a life and death struggle, and did not relish the joking. On the contrary, addressing his chum by his full name and surname: "I have taken my last drop," said he ina stern and serious voice, "come with me and right now let us go to the priest; it is too dreadful a thing to fall in the clutches of and be strangled by 'Old Nick!'" More bantering was the reply.

About the dawn of day there was a ring at the Father's doorbell, and there stood our friend the plasterer, who had walked several miles and who, on being let in, said to the writer abruptly: "Father, I want to go to confession, and take the pledge for life." and so he did; becoming, from that one, a most exemplary Christian, and spending the rest of his days in rounding up and bringing topers to the priest. His name was Henry Carroll.

Another, who would likewise bring topers to the priest, was Con McHugh, a things the more remarkable because he kept himself a liquor store. This lamented old-timer, one of the most charitable and kind-hearted citizens of Montana, at the beginning of Lent, 1878, head the priest suggest from the altar that abstinence from drink through that penitential and holy season would be the proper virtue to practice; it would not but please God, and many a blessing was surely in store for all who would abstain from any unnecessary drink through the whole

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of Lent. He there and then resolved to follow the priest's advice and be a total abstainer the whole Lenten season. Owing to some peculiarity of his constitution, he was now told by his physician that if he kept his pledge, it would doubtlessly cost him his life before the end of Lent. "It does not matter," he said top the doctor, "I will stand by my resolution." Taken sick some ten days after, he passed away about mid-Lent.

Finley McCrea is a name still familiar to many Helena people as well as to others who mined in the surrounding camps. The piety of that sturdy old-timer was indeed remarkably fervent, no less than solid. Week after week for several summers he walked the distance of something over forty miles to hear Mass on Sunday. He mined in Cave Gulch, some twenty-two miles from town, and laving there on foot Saturday afternoons he would reach the church Sunday mornings, receive holy communion, assist at the late Mass, go to confession, receive Holy communion, assist at the last Mass, he would set out again for Cave Gulch and be promptly at this post Monday morning.

Cast in the same mould seems to have been a nephew, as well as a namesake of his, a younger Finley McCrea. He had a placer claim some three miles southeast of Helena, which he owned jointly with a partner. Pressed by the latter to work on the Feast of the Assumption, though fully justified bevies of their scant supply of water, he bluntly told his partner that "there was not gold enough in the country to induce him to do any unnecessary labor on a feast day of obligation;" and throwing down his shovel, came to town to go to confession for the Feast.

It was here in Helena where the tiny slips called May Blossoms or Spiritual Flowerets were first introduced, to honor Our Blessed Lady during her May devotions; and those little readings have proved the cause or occasion of many an incident no less interesting than edifying.
To those just related we could well add not a few other incidents. But we must forego doing so, to proceed with our work.

Father Menetrey left Helena in November, 1877, and those who came to labor on this field after him were Fathers J. Guidi, J. G. Venneman, P. Barcelo, and for a couple of months also

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H. J. Camp. Father Guidi was attached to the Helena Missions from November, 1877, to the fall of 1880, and again at a later date, as we shall see further on.

Father J. G. Venneman arrived in the spring of 1880, and remained until August, 1882. In 1881 he built the Boulder Valley Church, named after St. John the Evangelist, and was the first priest who from Helena visited Miles City, being sent thither at the request of the Rt. Rev. Bishop O'Connor. Father Barcelo arrived in Helena in the month of September, 1880, and remained, more or less permanently, in the place several years.

At the time of our history there lived in Helena with their families some near relatives of James G. Blaine, one being John Blaine, his brother, and the other Blaine's sister, Elizabeth, married to Major Robert C. Walker, U S. A. Elizabeth was much devoted to her brother, James, and he in turn cherished a special fondness for her. On his being discussed as a probably candidates for the Presidency, she felt uncommonly worried lest some serious mishap should overtake him. She laid her fears open to him one day by letter, and asked him whether he would not accept and carry on his person a medal of Our Lady, which she would sent him from Montana. On his answering that he would gladly do so, Elizabeth sent him a tiny gold medal, blessed at her own request, and acknowledge by the recipient with expressions of thankfulness. The writer speaks whereof he knows, every particular having been confided to him by Mrs. Walker herself.

A couple of years or so after, while on his way tot Protestant church one Sunday morning in the summer, James G. Blaine, overcome by the heat, fell prostrated and unconscious at the entrance of the edifice. Friends were soon bending over him, doing all they could to revive him; whilst loosening his garments over his breast and around the neck, there was exposed to view a tiny gold charm hanging from a little cord on his neck: There is no account for the idiosyncrasies of great men, whispered in surpass one of the group, as he pointed to the thing with a nod of the head. The charm on Blaine's neck was

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the little medal which his sister had sent him from Montana.

The order of things, we well as gratefulness, bid us turn out eyes toward His Grace, the Most Rev. Archbishop Charles J. Seghers. True, we have referred to him already several times in connection with our subjects, but only incidentally; whereas the prominent part he took in promoting Catholicity in Montana entitles him indeed to something more than a incidental reference here and there.